I dedicate the fourth chapter of this thesis to discuss common sense in particular. I have in sight a specific problem of Reid’s theory of the first principles of common sense, namely, the problem of understanding how he argues in favor of the truth of those first principles. In the first section, I try to formulate more clearly what is (are) the problem (problems) to which I refer. I present some of the commentators’ solutions to it, trying to reveal why some of them fail to solve the proposed problem. In the second section, I present my own solution, explaining why I believe Reid has a strong argument (or arguments) in favor of the truth of the first principles of common sense. In the third section, I discuss the moderate character of Reid’s foundationalism–a moderated commitment that is based upon his view on the fallibility of the powers of mind and his confessed incapacity of replying to the radical sort of skepticism.
4.1) Understanding the problem of Reid’s defense of the first principles of common sense
4.1.1) Reid against skepticism
Behind the purpose of investigating the human mind, Reid is motivated by the project of fighting the skeptical positions of some authors of the 17th / 18th centuries. This motivation is already announced in the Dedication of the Inquiry, in a passage in which Reid calls attention to what, on his view, are the noxious consequences implied by a skeptical position:
[...] I am persuaded, that absolute scepticism is not more destructive of the faith of a Christian, than of the science of a philosopher, and of the prudence of a man of common understanding. I am persuaded, that the unjust live by faith as well as the just; that, if all belief could be laid aside, piety, patriotism, friendship, parental affection, and private virtue, would appear as ridiculous as knight-errantry; and that the pursuits of pleasure, of ambition, and of avarice, must be grounded upon belief, as well as those that are honourable and virtuous (IHM, Dedication, p. 04).
To properly answer skepticism is to preserve the possibilities of knowledge, morals and even religion, as Reid states.
150 A quick consideration of the history of philosophy in the 17th / 18th centuries is enough to understand the disturbing state of philosophy of mind, mainly due to the skeptical conclusions proposed by some authors: “THAT our philosophy concerning mind and its faculties, is but in a very low state, may be reasonably conjectured, even by those who never have narrowly examined it” (IHM, I, III, p. 16). Later, in the Intellecutal Powers, Reid reasserts his critique view about philosophy of mind condition: “[…] there is no branch of knowledge in which the ingenious and speculative have fallen into so great errors, and even absurdities” (EIP, Preface, p. 12-3). Reid considers Descartes’ philosophy, the author who has doubted the existence of the objects of external world and his own existence in investigating human mind. From the existence of his thought, he would supposedly have discovered the existence of a thinking substance to which his thoughts refer. Despite all his efforts, Descartes has left open some important questions at the end of his investigation:
But supposing it proved, that my thought and my consciousness must have a subject, and consequently that I exist, how do I know that all that train and succession of thoughts which I remember, belong to one subject, and that the I of this moment, is the very person I of yesterday, and of time past (IHM, I, III. p. 17)?
Locke had attempted to solve the problem of personal identity, however, his investigation did not achieve success: “so that Locke’s principle must be, that identity consists in remembrance; and consequently a man must lose his personal identity with regard to every thing he forgets” (IHM, I, III. p. 17). Malebranche, as much as Descartes and Locke, has attempted to prove the existence of objects of the external world, also without success:
Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke, have all employed their genius and skill, to prove the existence of the material world; and with very bad success. [...] They apply to philosohy to furnish them with resons for the belief of those things which all mankind have believed, without being able to give any reason for it. And surely one would expected, that, in matters of such importance, the proof would not be difficult: but it is the most difficult thing in the world (IHM, I, III. p. 17-8). Those authors had raised questions that they could not satisfactorily answer, despite all their efforts. According to Reid, nevertheless, philosophy of mind has achieved its most obscure condition with Berkeley’s and Hume’s systems. Despite Reid’s admiration for those authors, he acknowledges that their systems have brought many absurd consequences to the philosophical investigation of mind:
151 The first was no friend to scepticism, but had that warm concern for religious and moral principles which became his order: yet the result of his inquiry was, a serious conviction, that there is no such thing as a material world; nothing in nature but spirits and ideas; and that the belief of material substances, and of abstract ideas, are the chief causes of all our errors in philosophy, and of all infidelity and heresy in religion (IHM, I, V. p. 19).
About the author of the Treatise of Human Nature, in turn:
The second proceeds upon the same principles, but carries them to their full length; and as the Bishop undid the whole material world, this author, upon the same grounds, undoes the world of spirits, and leaves nothing in nature but ideas and impressions, without any subject on which they may be impressed (IHM, I, V. p. 20).
I try to clarify what sort of skepticism Reid has in mind when he intends to defend the first principles of common sense. I begin by presenting Jaffro’s (2006) brief but very enlightening observation about the prominence of the skeptical position at the end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th century–the position which Reid intends to combat:
Pour comprendre plus sérieusement la situation propre à la pensée britannique à l’issue du XVIIe siècle, il faut déterminer la répresentation que cette pensée se fait de ce qui est dominant dans la philosophie et plus généralement dans la vie intellectuelle. Cette représentation est d’abord le constat d’une catastrophe : le scepticisme domine la scène intellectuelle et pourrait ruiner les principes les mieux établis de la morale, de la religion, de la société, de la science et de la philosophie. Quel est l’ouvrage qui dresse le bilan encyclopédique de la philosophie moderne ? C’est le Dictionnaire de Bayle. Quelle la présentation donne-t-du savoir le plus élaboré ? Celle d’un triomphe du scepticisme sur tous les fornts : qu’s’agisse de la croyance religieuse, de la perception sensible ou de la conduite de la vie, les intellectuels diffusent des conceptions pernicieuses, selon lesquelles la vie ordinaire est une existence sous le régime, non seulement du préjugé, mais de l’illusion (JAFFRO, 2006, p. 20).
Jaffro show us that philosophy goes through a period of a skeptical crisis in that time. In my view, Jaffro’s description is very consistent with what Reid states in the Dedication of the Inquiry I have quoted above. Skepticism places science, religion and morals at risk. According to how Reid understands it, skepticism brings the most noxious consequences to philosophy and common life: it prevents us of keeping any belief, whatever it is. Jaffro also notes: “bref, la situation intellectuelle n’est pas caractérisée seulement par la diffusion des idées sceptiques, mais surtout par une profonde
152 contamination de la philosophie la mieux intentionnée” (JAFFRO, 2006, p. 21). In other words, even those authors who do not have skeptical intentions–like Locke and Berkeley on Reid’s view–have not been able to escape the skeptical conclusions. Reid himself is clear about this point:
Descartes no sooner began to dig in this mine, than scepticism was ready to break in upon him. He did what he could to shut it out. Malebranche and Locke, who dug deeper, found the difficulty of keeping out this enemy still to increase; but they labored honestly in the design. Then Berkeley, who carried on the work, despairing of securing all, bethought himself of an expedient: By giving up the material world, which he thought might be spared without loss, and even with advantage, he hoped by an impregnable partition to secure the world of spirits. But, alas! The Treatise of human nature wantonly sapped the foundation of this partition, and drowned all in one universal deluge (IHM, I, VII. p. 23).
The reading of Hume’s Treatise–the most eminent skeptic on Reid’s view–and the skeptical position resulting from the Humian investigation has decisively determined the direction of Reid’s philosophy57. As Reid understands it, the Treatise presents a skeptical system which does not allow the establishing of any foundation for common sense beliefs shared by us.
Here I present a brief clarification: Reid combats at least two sorts of skepticism. Firstly, he intends to reply to the ideal system skepticism. Such as Reid understands it, the ideal system has a close relation to skepticism:
These facts, which are undeniable, do indeed give reason to apprehend, that Descartes’s system of the human understanding, which I shall beg leave to call “the ideal system”, and which with some improvements made by later writers, is now generally received, hath some original defect; that this skepticism is inlaid in it, and reared along with it; and therefore, that we must lay it open to the foundation, and examine the materials, before we can expect to raise any solid and useful fabric of knowledge on this subject (IHM, I, VII. p. 23, emphasis added).
The ideal system is based upon the hypothesis that ideas are the only immediate objects of the operations of mind58. Reid understands that the skeptical conclusions of the ideal
57 The third chapter of his biography, by Alexander Fraser (1898), is mainly dedicated to the impact
Hume’s philosophy has caused on Reid’s intellectual life and how it has motivated his philosophical investigations (FRASER, 1898, p. 30-42).
58 This passage summarizes Reid’s understanding on the ideal hypothesis: “Philosophers indeed tell me,
that the immediate object of my memory and imagination in this case, is not the past sensation, but an idea of it, an image, phantasm, or species of the odour I smelled: that this idea now exists in my mind, or in my sensorium; and the mind contemplating this present idea, finds it a representation of what is past, or
153 system are necessary consequences of this ideal hypothesis. Hume would have been the first author who took this hypothesis to its final consequences:
The modern scepticism, I mean that of Mr. Hume, is built upon principles which were very generally maintained by Philosophers, though they did not see that they led to skepticism. Mr. Hume, by tracing, with great acuteness and ingenuity, the consequences of principles commonly received, has shewn that they overturn all knowledge, and at last overturn themselves, and leave the mind in perfect suspense (EIP, VI, IV, p. 461-2, emphasis added).
The Treatise presents, as Reid sees it, a skeptical system which does not allow the establishment of any sort of knowledge. Humian system is the most radical skeptical system, so that there is no room for anything else except the existence of the ideas:
Ideas seem to have something in their nature unfriendly to other existences. They were first introduced into philosophy, in the humble character of images or representatives of things; and in this character they seemed not only to be inoffensive, but to serve admirably well for explaining the operations of the understanding. But since men began to reason clearly and distinctly about them, they have by degrees supplanted their constituents, and undermined the existence of every thing but themselves (IHM, II, VI. p. 33-4).
Hume’s conclusions are not consequences of any mistake in his reasonings. On the contrary, Hume presents conclusions correctly deduced from the ideal hypothesis. The acceptance of the ideal hypothesis has as consequence the denial of all the knowledge. In this sense, to reply to the skepticism of the ideal system is to attack the foundation of the ideal system, the ideal hypothesis. I ask permission to not consider Reid’s critique of the ideal system59.
I would like to focus on the second sort of skepticism Reid intends to reply: the skepticism about the epistemic reliability of the faculties of mind. In short, this is that sort of skepticism which put into question common sense beliefs in virtue of a doubt
of what may exist; and accordingly calls it memory, or imagination. This is the doctrine of the ideal philosophy” (IHM, II, III. p. 28).
59 In brief, Reid tries to show that the authors of the ideal system have never presented any evidence of
the existence of their principles, that is, they have never proven the existence of the ideas. For that reason, the ideal hypothesis would be a simple fiction of the mind of those authors. In the Inquiry, Reid claims: “we shall afterwards examine this system of ideas, and endeavour to make it appear, that no solid proof has ever been advanced of the existence of ideas; that they are a mere fiction and hypothesis, contrived to solve the phenomena of the human understanding; that they do not at all answer this end; and that this hypothesis of ideas or images of things in the mind, or in the sensorium, is the parent of those many paradoxes so shocking to common sense, and of that scepticism, which disgrace our philosophy of the mind, and have brought upon it the ridicule and contempt of sensible men” (IHM, II, III. p. 28). In the
Intellectual Powers, Reid discusses in more details why the ideal hypothesis should be eliminated from
philosophy. In order to do this, he presents five reflections on the common theory of ideas (EIP, II, XIV, p. 171-87).
154 about the reliability of the faculties of mind to which they are due. For instance, a skeptic of this sort could argue that, if it is not possible to prove the reliability of the powers of senses, we could not be legitimated in assuming our natural beliefs about the external world as true beliefs. Here, I think of that sort of skepticism Descartes has raised about the senses in the end of the first meditation of his Méditations Métaphysiques (1641):
Je supposerai donc qu’il y a, non point un vrai Dieu, qui est la souveraine source de vérité, mais un certain mauvais génie, non moins rusé et trompeur que puissant, qui a employé toute son industrie à me tromper. Je penserai que le ciel, l’air, la terre, les couleurs, les figures, les sons et toutes les choses extériures que nous voyons, ne sont que des illusions et tromperies, dont il se sert pour surprendre, ma crédulité. Je me considérerai moi-même comme n’ayant point de mains, point d’yeux, point de chair, point de sang, comme n’ayant aucun sens, mais croyant faussement avoir toutes ces choses (DESCARTES, 1992, 67-9).
Descartes puts into question the reliability of the senses and the beliefs due to them. Moreover, he has cast doubts even upon the operations of reason and their beliefs. In the light of the argument of a deceiver God, Descartes has indeed claimed:
Et même, comme je juge quelquefois que les autres se méprennent, même dans les choses qu’ils pensent savoir avec le plus de certitude, il se peut faire qu’il ait voulu que je me trompe toutes les fois que je fais l’addition de deux et de trois, ou que je nombre les côtés d’un carré, ou que je juge de quelque chose encore plus facile, si l’on se peut imaginer rien de plus facile que cela (DESCARTES, 1992, p. 65) I also appeal to Ralph Cudworth’s (1617-1688) to illustrate the sort of skepticism I suppose Reid intends to reply. In A treatise concerning eternal and immutable morality (1731), the author considers the opinion that nothing can be proven as absolutely true– an opinion that, according to him, has received much support in his time. If we suppose that the powers of mind have been correctly created, we would be authorized to claim at most that our beliefs are merely hypothetically true:
For if we cannot otherwise possibly be certain of the truth of any thing, but only ex hypothesi that our faculties are rightly made, of which none can have certain assurance but only he that made them, then all created minds whatsoever must of necessity be condemned of eternal scepsis. Neither ought they ever to assent to any thing as certainly true, since all their truth and knowledge as such is but relative to their faculties arbitrarily made, that may possibly be false, and their clearest apprehensions nothing but perceptual delusions (CUDWORTH, 1996, p. 137-8).
155 The skeptical consequences of this opinion are clear:
Wherefore according to this doctrine, we having no absolute certainty of the first principles of all our knowledge, as that quod cogitat, est [whatever thinks, is], Aequalia addita aequalibus efficient aequalia [equals added to equals make equals], Omnis numerus est vel par vel impar [every number is either even or odd]. We can neither be sure of any mathematical or metaphysical truth, nor of the existence of God, nor of ourselves (CUDWORTH, 1996, p. 138).
In the light of that supposition, a doubt about the reliability of the powers of mind, every single belief becomes doubtful. This view described by Cudworth implies the sort of skepticism Reid seems to have in sight: the truth of our beliefs–be they about the existence of the external world, about the existence of ourselves or about mathematical truths–would not be guarantee if there is no proof of the reliability of the powers to they are due.
I maintain the distinction between two sorts of skepticism in mind in the coming sections. This is important to avoid the mistake of supposing that the reply to the first sort of skepticism, the skepticism of the ideal system, is sufficient to reply to that second sort of skepticism and, consequently, guarantee the truth of the first principles of common sense. This seems to be the consequence of Paul Vernier (1976) interpretation. Indeed, the author argues that Reid justifies the first principles by objecting the ideal hypothesis, that is, by arguing that the skeptics would not have good reasons to doubt those beliefs if their opinions were based upon the supposition that ideas are the immediate objects of mind. According to Vernier’s Reid, the skepticism on common sense beliefs would fail in that the principle of the ideal system is false. To reply to the skepticism would be a matter of objecting the principle upon which the ideal system is based:
Hume’s skepticism, which he acknowledges to be the motivating force behind his philosophic efforts, was in his view the most persuasive statement of skepticism. […] But Hume’s was impressive because it was premised on principles of philosophy that were almost unquestioned from the time of Descartes, and because he considered